Commander-in-Chief Ball in pictures
President Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration continued on Monday evening with the Commander in Chief Ball.
It was the first of three evening stops as he was also due to attend the Liberty Ball and Starlight Ball.
Legal battles erupt over Trump’s ‘DOGE’ advisory panel led by Elon Musk
Minutes after Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish the Department of Government Efficiency, its creation was challenged in court.
Despite its name, “DOGE,” as it is known, is not a department but rather an advisory panel headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
During the election, it was first proposed that DOGE would find “drastic” cuts to the federal government. But the executive order said the group’s aim was to “modernize federal technology and software.”
Government employee unions, watchdog groups, and public interest organizations sued within minutes of the announcement. Among them were National Security Counselors, the American Public Health Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and Public Citizen.
They argue DOGE was breaking a law that governed federal advisory committees and was also suing over the DOGE’s uncertain status.
Trump suspends US foreign development aid programs for review
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order temporarily suspending all US foreign development assistance programs for 90 days.
The order mandates that all department and agency heads responsible for these programs immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds.
During the 90-day suspension, the programs will be reviewed to determine their alignment with Trump’s policy goals.
The order, one of many signed on his first day back in office, criticizes the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”
The order even went as far as stating that these programs often, “destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
Trump signs order to withdraw United States from WHO
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The US will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months and will stop all financial support for its work.
Trump criticized the WHO for failing to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and for requiring “unfairly onerous payments” from the US compared to countries like China.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said as he signed the order during his first day back in the White House.
The US is the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its funding.
Trump started the process of quitting the WHO in his first presidential term, but President Joe Biden was able to stop the process when he took office in January 2021.
Trump delays TikTok ban
President Donald Trump signed an order to delay implementing the law banning TikTok in the United States for 75 days.
When asked what the TikTok order meant, Trump said, it “just gave me the right to sell it or close it.”
TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance missed a deadline on Saturday to sell its US subsidiary to non-Chinese buyers or be banned in the country.
The video-sharing platform took itself offline for US users for several hours over the weekend before returning when Trump vowed executive action.
The US president signaled his frustration with the reasoning behind the possible TikTok ban, saying China made a lot of other things that are sold in the US, including phones.
But he said it was in China’s interest to approve a deal to sell the company.
Earlier, TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration, sitting behind the president as one of his guests.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/trump-orders-us-exit-from-paris-climate-agreement-and-who/live-71346591
